Lancaster Red Roses

The Lancaster Red Roses played in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, from 1906 until 1961, won six league championships, and sent three future Hall of Famers through their roster. They also got their name by accident, on a single afternoon, in front of a reporter.

Before the 1906 opener against York, the York manager said publicly that Lancaster would finish last again. Lancaster took the field that day in brand-new uniforms of white and dark blue, which made the club's existing name, the Maroons, immediately obsolete, and won the game 9 to 4. Writers covering what they were already calling a war between the roses needed something to call the home side, and settled on the Red Roses. It stuck for fifty-five years.

The titles came in bunches. Lancaster won the Tri-State League in 1909, then took four Interstate League pennants in 1940, 1943, 1944 and 1945, and added a Piedmont League championship in 1955. Stan Coveleski signed with Lancaster in 1909 on his way to a career that ended in Cooperstown. Nellie Fox and George Kell both passed through as well, which gives one small-city club three Hall of Famers.

Home games were played at Stumpf Field in Manheim Township, a ballpark that local leagues still use today. The Red Roses played their last season in 1961.

The rivalry that named them ran for the better part of a century. The other half of it is our York White Roses collection.